Only an arch levity saves this from being trite. I should have to quote too much before I could illustrate his amusement with the possible delusions of men's thoughts. But occasionally a serious shudder is glimpsed behind the smiling mask.
"And suddenly there's no meaning in our kiss
And your lit upward face grows, where we lie,
Lonelier and dreadfuller than sunlight is,
And dumb and mad and eyeless like the sky."
His sovran preoccupation, that which inspired his best poems, was the least suitable for one whom some have imagined cut out for the part of a modern Antinous, to whom the elite of London, both male and female, should corporately play the part of a platonic Hadrian. His thoughts flocked about death. At first he dallies with them.
"Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire
Of watching you; and swing me suddenly
Into the shade and loneliness and mire
Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,
One day, I think I'll find a cool wind blowing,
See a slow light across the Stygian tide,
And hear the dead about me stir, unknowing,
And tremble. And I shall know that you have died
And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,
Pass light as ever, through the lightless host,
Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam—
Most individual and bewildering ghost!—
And turn and toss your brown delightful head
Amusedly, among the ancient Dead."
But his contemplation of possible significance in life's end passes gradually into serener moods.
CLOUDS
Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
